Valve's SteamOS Not a Replacement for Windows 8

Although this was touched lightly on Monday, Engadget's hands-on report regarding Valve's Steam Machine prototype revealed an interesting tidbit about SteamOS itself; it's not a replacement for Windows 8. This is likely bad news for PC gamers looking for an alternative operating system that not only plays Linux-based Steam games, but allows them to manage files, work on documents and use the Steam Machine as a typical desktop.

As previously reported, SteamOS is similar to Steam's Big Picture Mode except that this interface is the basis for the entire hardware system. Engadget reports that the same Steam splash page washes across the screen when it launches, and the same tile-based layout of games and the Steam store are visible at launch. The platform is also built on pure Linux, not Canonical's Ubuntu, making it a custom platform instead of a spinoff.

The report goes on to state that SteamOS is not a replacement for Windows 8, that it offers little functionality outside what's described above. "Beyond basics like browsing the web, there's little in the way of standard OS functions," Engadget reports. "While Valve reps showed off slides of the box's vanity shots using a Windows PC, I asked how I'd view such shots from within SteamOS -- the answer is that there's no real way to do so, as there's no file browsing system or image viewing application."

The report points out that customers of Valve's Steam Machine initiative aren't really shopping for a desktop PC, but essentially a game console that focuses on PC games rather than the typical Xbox/PlayStation envelopes. These machines will ship with a game controller and the SteamOS platform, thus allowing Valve to say that the device is capable of playing the entire Linux-based Steam library. However, the report puts an emphasis on what a Steam Machine really is: PCs posing as game consoles.

What's surprising is that, based on the report, there won't even be base level support for media playback, or streaming options like Netflix, Hulu Plus and so on that are offered on the current console crops. That will likely change, as Valve already indicated that movies and TV shows were coming to Steam; Linux-based software is also likely on the horizon. Unfortunately, the game streaming aspect wasn't available at the time of the report.

"We're working with many of the media services you know and love," reads the SteamOS page. "Soon we will begin bringing them online, allowing you to access your favorite music and video with Steam and SteamOS. With SteamOS, 'openness' means that the hardware industry can iterate in the living room at a much faster pace than they've been able to. Content creators can connect directly to their customers. Users can alter or replace any part of the software or hardware they want."

We're probably just scratching the surface of what's going to be possible with SteamOS. We're also betting even more juicy details will be provided during CES 2014, and we'll be right there front-and-center!

And the fundamental issue with this entire concept is it's based on Linux, therefore the actual number of "PC" games that can run on a Steam Box is miniscule. I look at my current Steam library and I don't see a single game that can run on a Steam Box.

Plus, the hardware is still PC bits, so a powerful Steam Box will cost the same as a powerful "traditional" gaming PC, so what's the cost of Windows on top of that?

I don't get who this is for? If you want to pay £300 for a quiet living room PC then you want it to do all the every day things as well as gaming (browsing, chat, facebook, streaming, recording TV, media library, etc). You can already do that if you pay £78 for win8.1 and then install Steam Big Picture. I suppose if you are a serious enthusiast and you want to play something that needs muscle, then the only option is to slave up to your gaming rig through a steam box. How many people is that though? Surely not many?

I don't get who this is for? If you want to pay £300 for a quiet living room PC then you want it to do all the every day things as well as gaming (browsing, chat, facebook, streaming, recording TV, media library, etc). You can already do that if you pay £78 for win8.1 and then install Steam Big Picture. I suppose if you are a serious enthusiast and you want to play something that needs muscle, then the only option is to slave up to your gaming rig through a steam box. How many people is that though? Surely not many?

I don't get who this is for? If you want to pay £300 for a quiet living room PC then you want it to do all the every day things as well as gaming (browsing, chat, facebook, streaming, recording TV, media library, etc). You can already do that if you pay £78 for win8.1 and then install Steam Big Picture. I suppose if you are a serious enthusiast and you want to play something that needs muscle, then the only option is to slave up to your gaming rig through a steam box. How many people is that though? Surely not many?

There is a serious problem with Wndows 8.1, its getting closed off like Mac OSX and developers are having a hard time developing games for it. Direct X is archaic and bottlenecks GPUs. MS is pushing gaming towards X-Bone to make money and out of its Windows platform.

This is why Linux gaming and this is why SteamOS came to be. We are abandoning MS it is as simple as that. Games that want to make it onto Steam will have to develop for Linux / OpenGL first. It looks like we are headed for such a future.

I guess we'll see how the Steam Box pans out in the coming months. Right now it's up in the air and, beyond tech/geek discussion, I just cannot see what this is trying to achieve and who it's marketed at: hardware potentially up to 5 times the cost of a console with a practically non-existent (but growing) set of games to actually run on the thing.

I do see great benefit in streaming games from my Titan-based system upstairs to the living room for group play, but in all honesty if I have any games that I want to play with other people in the living room then I'll probably already have them on my PS3 and fire that up instead. The only thing for me that a Steam Box could do is remove the need to buy a PS4 and just stream content from the Titan.